Startup Airlines Looking to Land At Buchanan Field / Other Bay Area airports clogging up

Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, April 10, 1999

1999-04-10 04:00:00 PDT CONCORD -- Increasing congestion at Bay Area airports and on the highways may bring commercial passenger jets back to Buchanan Field in Concord eight years after the last airline took off.

Over the past two months, two startup companies have submitted letters expressing their interest in providing passenger jet service between Buchanan Field and Southern California, said David Mendez, Contra Costa County airports manager.

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Any commercial service out of Buchanan Field would require approval from the county Board of Supervisors, among others, and it would be at least another year before flights could begin.

Buchanan Field, which sits between Interstate 680 and Highways 4 and 242 in the center of Contra Costa, has not had commercial jet service since 1991 when USAir bought Pacific Southwest Airlines and consolidated all its Bay Area operations at Oakland International Airport.

PSA's five daily flights between Buchanan and Los Angeles weren't grounded for a lack of passengers. Planes out of Concord were consistently between 70 and 90 percent full, according to Mendez, who became Contra Costa airports manager in 1997.

Since USAir's departure, no other airlines have expressed interest in Buchanan, instead directing their flights to San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose airports.

Current airline interest in Buchanan, said Mendez, is stimulated by the county's population growth, worsening freeway traffic and increased congestion at the major airports in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.

"We average at least one phone call a week from someone wondering whether we have air carrier service to L.A. or whether we're going to get it," Mendez said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize there is a market here."

"To be able to say to a company that their people can fly from Concord to L.A. instead of having to drive to Oakland or San Francisco makes locating a business in Contra Costa County much more attractive," said Brad Nail of the Concord chamber.

But while commercial flights out of Concord may be popular among air travelers in Contra Costa and Solano counties, the uproar from Buchanan's neighbors may be deafening -- even though the airlines plan to use smaller, quieter 40- to 50-passenger aircraft.

Residents of Pleasant Hill and Pacheco protested PSA's flights in the late 1980s and early '90s and flooded Buchanan's noise-complaints line with regular calls. Mendez expects the opposition and says the process of deciding whether to bring passenger jets back to Buchanan will be open and public.

"(It's) just the start of a very involved and inclusive process that will involve the neighboring communities and the Board of Supervisors," he said.